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8/27/2014 3:40AM

Japan’s Scandal-Hit Stem-Cell Center to Be Downsized

One of Japan’s leading research institutions, the prestigious Riken Institute, will scale down the center at the heart of a stem-cell research scandal earlier this year. WSJ’s Ramy Inocencio speaks with Tokyo bureau chief Peter Landers for the details.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... after a much publicized stem cell research scandal Japan's prestigious weekend Institute is going to don't scale the center ... at the heart of it all Iranian Senseo for Asia Today the Wall Street Journal's took your beer chief Peter Landers joins me right now with all the D tells the Peter ... has been a huge loss of facing credibility of the last several months since the scandal broke out ... how important has the weekend in St been though ... in scientific research and that what's the equivalent say in the United States ... you might call a smaller or equivalent of the National Institutes of Health ... the as things now is not as technically ... directly run by the government but it receives most of its bond from the government ... pressed each terms ... three candidates at the top of that ... of the Japanese the scientific establishment going back almost a hundred years ... so it's really wanna most prestigious scientific isn't using them ... and this US Center for developmental biology within reach and was one of its rising stars ... alright know what are the specifics with the changes that say everything is going to undergo ... this is the ever developer biology as says it's going to cut about half of its research staff ... and a half this ... research units ... so it's a it's a huge cut following this scandal and suggests that they believe ... the problems go beyond a single research or or or group of researchers really affects the whole ... Institute which is ... looking a largely into stem cells ... write and how much of a setback t think this is going to ... effects on the CD The and read the region Institute ... arena ... the breakthroughs that they ... reported that they've done were something that riffic but of course now we know that say least they haven't been done ... I've been able to been ... redone so when we talk about in terms of the future for stem cell research in the country ... I think there is a broader impact on stem cell research you could say that there was this was just one paper or a group of two papers ... in the journal nature ... that ... purported to find a new way of creating stem cells ... that would have been revolutionary if it could have been replicated but all the efforts to ... replicate it fails to just that ... the inability to replicate this and all the errors in terms of duplicated images and so on ... and in those two papers ... that's a huge hit to the reputation of the of the center ... and I think it does affect the stem cell community more broadly because ... well there are huge advantage of advances in stem cell research over the last ten or fifteen years ... the field is also struggled I would say there have been ... in other cases of research misconduct ... and more generally the difficulty of translating ... the basic discoveries in the lab some of which have been confirmed ... a into actual treatments and therapies for for real patients ... so ... it's it's another example of how the field itself is struggling to really ... become relevant to the public ... write a big setback over there in Japan The Wall Street Journal's took your beer chief Peter Landers joining me but the de tails on of the prestigious reconsider scaling down in being renamed after ... a scandal in stem cell research more this head to The Wall Street Journal The com Iranian Senseo in Hong Kong ...